


Keeping only useless secrets

by Caers



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caers/pseuds/Caers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it is.</p>
<p>There are things about John that Sherlock will never know.  Things he’s buried deep inside that he will not uncover, not for anyone, not for himself, not for Sherlock.</p>
<p>Imagine his surprise when Sherlock uncovers them on his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping only useless secrets

This is how it is.

There are things about John that Sherlock will never know. Things he’s buried deep inside that he will not uncover, not for anyone, not for himself, not for Sherlock.

Imagine his surprise when Sherlock uncovers them on his own.

*

John places the mug of tea next to Sherlock, who darts a glance over. His fingers freeze in mid motion on the keyboard and his hand snaps out, closing around John’s wrist. John doesn’t move, doesn’t try to pull away. He’s learned that it’s easier, quicker, to just let Sherlock get on with it.

Sherlock pulls his hand closer, uncurls John’s fingers, examines the knuckles. The scars on the knuckles. John swears inside his head, doesn’t bother to hide the look of anger and then resignation. Sherlock’s had all of fifteen seconds to study the scars; more than enough time to deduce their origin.

“Just, get it over with,” John growls as they near a minute of silence. Sherlock’s fingertips ghost over the scars on the knuckles. 

Sherlock looks up at him, a twitch of a frown. He drops John’s hand and shrugs, looks away.

He’s, not going to? John feels a moment of gratitude for the tact, but also a flare of disappointment. Something inside him tightens, closes down more. He hadn’t wanted Sherlock to know this, but now... Well, now he wants Sherlock to say it, to get it out, acknowledge it. Maybe give him some sort of, of atonement. God, he doesn’t need atonement. It doesn’t matter. Fuck it.

John turns to go sit in his chair but Sherlock has hold of his wrist again, fingers closing gently around this time, and he gives a slight tug, asking John for permission, almost. John feels a moment of panic before he lets Sherlock pull him back.

“A fight, obviously.” Sherlock lifts John’s hand, his left hand, the one with intermittent tremors. “Scars are a few years old. So, from when you were in Afghanistan. Not from a skirmish.” His fingers feel out the scars, cataloguing the shape of them. “A personal fight. There’s no other reason for there to be so many wounds. You would have simply shot anyone in skirmish. Or used your knife in close quarters.”

John sets his tea down. He’s trembling, fine tremors through his entire body and the tea is hot, he doesn’t want to spill it.

Sherlock’s eyes flick up to meet his for a moment, asking silent permission to continue. John doesn’t pull away. It’s as much as he can give right now. 

“You had to have stitches here.” Sherlock presses lightly on once scar across the knuckle of John’s middle finger. “And soon after the incident. It happened on base then, and not on leave. Another soldier? One of your own men. You repeatedly hit one of the men in your own unit. A subordinate.” He frowns, as if that information is completely at odds with what he knows of John. Good, decent, wholesome John. Who shot a man to save someone he barely knew. Who would do it again. Who beat the ever loving shit out of a man under his command.

John clenches his jaw and still doesn’t pull away. Sherlock takes a quick breath and doesn’t look up. 

“He did something.” Sherlock dares a quick look up at John. “Something you probably couldn’t prove but was so grievous it offended not only you but the rest of your unit. No one reported you, despite the soldier in question having to most likely be hospitalised. There was no punishment for you.”

John feels something crack inside. Please, he thinks. Please tell me, Sherlock. He needs to hear what he’s done, desperately needs to hear someone say it. Because no one has. No one has mentioned it, ever, like it never happened. Like that part of him had never come to the fore.

“He did something to a civilian. Someone defenseless. A woman or a child, most likely. Rape, outright murder? I can’t possibly tell.”

John licks his lips. He tries to speak but his throat is too dry and the words are too jagged, ripping at his tongue. He clears his throat and swallows, tries again. “Both,” he manages but can’t elaborate. 

Sherlock nods and his own lips press together for a moment. He doesn’t push for more details. “You found out about it. Knew there was no proof, no way to see him punished. He wouldn’t have done it when you were around, so one of the other men with him told you. Hoping you would do something. And you did.” He presses again on the widest scar. “You broke his front teeth with this punch. It ripped open the skin. It wasn’t the last punch, either. How long was he in hospital?”

“He was a trained soldier and he fought me.” John answers, quietly but in a steady voice. “Two weeks before he could be transferred. Another two weeks once he was back in England.”

“Good,” Sherlock says, his voice a hiss. He doesn’t look up at John. He does raise John’s hand to his mouth and his tongue licks over the wide scar, then over the others, faint lines on his hands. He sighs, and presses a kiss to John’s knuckles, then lets his hand go.

John lets out a shaky breath. Good, Sherlock had said. Thank god. Thank you, Sherlock. Oh yes, plenty of judgement there. In his favour. Tacit approval. Always approval for him. John leans over and presses a kiss to Sherlock’s temple, brushes his cheek over the dark curls, then steps away and goes to his chair to sip at his lukewarm tea.

*

He expected it to happen again, after his father. As a doctor he’s seen it plenty of times, but personally. He expected it to be Harry. Sat at her bedside, waiting for the moment when she’d ask him to just, make it all stop. 

It’s a shock that it isn’t Harry, though. And that he’s faced with this far sooner than he’d ever have expected.

And that Sherlock draws out another of his deep, dark secrets and drops it in the middle of the room like it isn’t one of those things John has hidden away for half his life.

He comes back from doing the shopping to find Sherlock sat on the couch, fully dressed. He looks tense, worried. Which makes John drop the shopping bags by the door and go to his side, sitting next to him on the couch in wide eyed silence. He doesn’t prompt Sherlock. In his own time or not at all.

After several minutes Sherlock slumps forward, hands covering his face, and he takes a shuddering breath. John wants to reach out and comfort him, wrap his arms around him and hold him close and whisper to him that it’ll be fine, whatever it is, they’ll solve it. But he doesn’t. He can’t guarantee that, and it will just irritate Sherlock.

Finally Sherlock sits up again and takes a deep breath. “I have cancer,” he states, obviously going for flat, emotionless. It comes out shaking, desperate. 

John sucks down a deep breath and bites his tongue against any platitudes. “Details,” he requests. Give himself and Sherlock the refuge of the cold facts. He doesn’t know how he could have missed this. How could he have missed signs of cancer in his best friend?

“Lung cancer. Years of smoking,” Sherlock says. He doesn’t elaborate with those desperately needed details. His hands are shaking so John reaches over and closes one of his hands around them. “It, came on suddenly. It sometimes does. Nothing they can do. Six months, at best.”

“No treatment options?” If Sherlock says there’s nothing they can do, there probably isn’t. He’ll have researched every option possible before coming to John with this. Still, John is a doctor, even if he isn’t an oncologist, even if he somehow missed this. 

“At best they could prolong...” He shudders. “They could give me an extra few months. Three months of being bedridden and sick and in pain. I went through that once, in detox, that debilitating sickness. I won’t do it again, John.”

John wants to sag on the couch and cry. He knows this. He saw his father go through it when he was barely licensed to practice. He watched his father slowly die and he’ll watch Sherlock, and it’ll break him in a way that his father’s death hadn’t, but he’ll do it.

“When the time comes,” Sherlock says, voice steady now. “You’ll do it for me, won’t you? You’ve done it once. Surely, surely you will...” He trails off and doesn’t look at John, looking down at their hands instead. 

John’s breath leaves him, like someone punching him in the stomach. How did he know? How could anyone have ever known?

“Of course,” he answers without thinking. And then he clenches his jaw, and his hand. He thinks about it and finds that his answer isn’t any different. “Of course,” he repeats, stronger now, a promise.

Sherlock lets out a small sigh and leans over, rests his head on John’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

John feels like he’s shaking apart inside. But it’s all right. He feels stronger now. Better even, that someone knows that long held secret, that someone relies on him to do it again. And he will. And maybe, this time, he’ll go along for the journey. 

“Always at my side,” Sherlock whispers.

“Just trying to keep up,” John returns.

\--

“They made a mistake,” Sherlock announces, breezing into the lounge. 

“According to you the Met make a lot of mistakes,” John says, looking back at his book. “What’ve they done now?”

Sherlock strides over to John and grins down at him. “That idiot doctor,” he says. “Who I won’t be seeing again by the way, my family’s long-time practitioner be damned. You’re the only doctor I’ll see from now on.”

John’s fingers go nerveless, the book slipping from his hands to thump on the floor. “What?”

“I went to three other doctors, recommended by Mycroft. There’s nothing wrong with me.” He produces a set of papers, holds them out to John with shaking hands. “I, you can contact any of them to reassure yourself that I’m not lying,” he says quietly. His face is sombre but there isn’t a line of deceit in his face, his body, his voice, and John has studied Sherlock enough to be able to find even a trace of a lie.

John takes the papers, flips through them, then goes back and reads each in depth He will be contacting them. All of them. Not because he doubts Sherlock’s word but because he can’t quite believe this stroke of luck.

“You don’t have cancer,” he finally says, laughing. Hysteria, of course. Shock. He rubs his forehead, covers his face, lets out a sob. He jumps to his feet and pulls Sherlock into his arms; not a hug, they’re clutching at each other, reaffirming life, all of that claptrap that is suddenly the most important thing in the world. 

Sherlock buries his face in John’s neck and his cheeks are wet; but then, so are John’s.

*

“You no longer protest.”

John sighs, wondering just what the hell Sherlock is talking about now. He’s tired, he’s annoyed, and he’s sore. He’s ready for his bed, is what he is. “Can we save the non-sequiturs for when I’ve had a bit of a kip?” he asks, wincing as he shrugs off his jacket.

Sherlock makes a sound of annoyance and pulls John’s jacket off the rest of the way, hangs it up. “And again you fail to follow the logical steps toward the subject of conversation.”

“Yeah, well, us mortal minds slow when we’re deprived of sleep.” John sits and bends over to work at the ties of his shoes with clumsy fingers. 

“You’ve stopped protesting when anyone implies we’re a couple,” Sherlock clarifies, sitting opposite John.

John glances up, frowning. “Oh. Right. It’s just.” He clears his throat and pulls off his shoes so he doesn’t have to finish that thought.

“It used to make you uncomfortable,” Sherlock points out. “No doubt due to your history of mild homophobia. However...”

“Wait, wait,” John interrupts. “I am not--”

“Not anymore, surely. I wouldn’t have a flatmate that narrow minded, of course. Even though until recently you were still somewhat offended at anyone implying that you, specifically, were gay or even bisexual.”

John waves a hand and cuts Sherlock off. “Fine, fine. You’ve been able to figure out my other secrets fairly easily, so I’ll just go ahead and concede this one as well, okay? Yes, I was homophobic. More than mildly, when I was young. You know, until Harry came out. I guess that changed my perspective. And yeah, some of that lingered. For a long time. Not that I would ever have... I wouldn’t have discriminated against someone. God no, certainly not after I started practicing medicine, especially. I just, didn’t want anyone else to think that about me.”

“Even though you thought that of you,” Sherlock says, always so quick to the punch.

And it feels like a punch. He slumps back in his chair. “Yeah. I never followed through on it. Not even once. Overcompensated with women, I suppose.”

“You aren’t now. You haven’t asked anyone on a date in months. You’ve stopped talking about it. You no longer protest the candles, the barely hidden comments that we’re dating.”

“Shagging, I think is Sally’s choice of phrase.” John manages a half smile, then a weak laugh. “No. I’m done bothering about it. It doesn’t matter, does it. Not after...” He trails off and licks his lips. Not after I was going to euthanise you, then kill myself, he finishes in his head.

Sherlock nods as if he hears the thought. Probably does. Probably telegraphed through every inch of my body, John considers. 

“You may be lost without your blogger,” John says, pulling up those half hearted, joking words of Sherlock’s from ages ago. “But, well, I’d be lost without you as well, Sherlock. And maybe there is someone out there who could save me if I lost you, but I don’t want to know about them. I don’t want them. I don’t want to know a life without you, all right? So no, I’m not protesting anymore.”

Sherlock tilts his head to the side and eyes John. “What if we were to actively encourage it?” he asks, looking down at one hand to pick at a scab on a finger.

“I think everything we do actively encourages it,” John points out. He gets what Sherlock is saying, what he’s asking. He hopes Sherlock realises that this is his way of saying yes.

Sherlock looks up, startled for only a second before he stands and holds out a hand to John. “Come on then,” he says. “My bed is bigger and we both need to rest.”

John lets Sherlock pull him up, and takes a moment to pull Sherlock’s head down so their foreheads press together. 

He should have known better than to think he could ever keep anything from Sherlock, but that doesn’t matter now. 

He lets Sherlock lead him into his bedroom.

**Author's Note:**

> “Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and in sight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know.” ― Michel Foucault


End file.
